The Seattle Seahawks made a $100 million gamble on Sam Darnold that, through 12 weeks, looks like one of the NFL’s best offseason moves.
Darnold’s Seahawks are 8-3 and a virtual lock to reach the postseason for the first time since 2022. They have one of the best and most explosive offenses in the league. Darnold, their 28-year-old signal caller, is one of the NFL’s best and most explosive passers — just as he was last season for the Minnesota Vikings.
Minnesota also made a Darnold-related gamble this offseason. After he quarterbacked the Vikings to a 14-3 record, Minnesota let Darnold walk and went all in on J.J. McCarthy as QB1.
That decision has looked like a flop.
The Vikings (4-7) have lost three straight games and five of their last six. McCarthy, the 10th pick in the 2024 NFL Draft who missed his rookie season due to a torn meniscus in his knee, is off to a historically bad start. Minnesota, which has had a successful passing attack since head coach Kevin O’Connell arrived in 2022, has one of the NFL’s worst offenses.
The Seahawks host the Vikings this Sunday at Lumen Field, where, 11 months ago, Darnold inspired Seattle’s franchise-altering decision with a gutsy game-winning performance.
McCarthy is in the concussion protocol and is not expected to play Sunday. But whether the Vikings start McCarthy or undrafted rookie Max Brosmer, Minnesota and Seattle will meet as two teams headed in drastically different directions, with decisions on Darnold as the common denominator.
To anyone who watched last year’s Week 17 matchup between the Vikings and Green Bay Packers, the dynamics of this weekend’s game would sound like a trip into some bizarre alternate universe.
At the time, Darnold reupping with the Vikings seemed likely, if not necessary. One particular scene will forever be seared into the minds of anyone associated with the 2024 Vikings. Darnold, emerging from a 377-yard, three-touchdown gem against the rival Packers in late December, jogged from the field toward the home locker room inside U.S. Bank Stadium.
Unprompted, his teammates had planned a celebration. They doused him with water bottles when he finally arrived, then lifted him onto their shoulders.
His reaction was childlike. It was an organic window into the multiplication effect that can occur when a team genuinely believes in the man pulling the trigger.
The Sam Darnold experience continues. pic.twitter.com/k5db9DYdtp
— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) December 30, 2024
“I didn’t know what to do with my hands in that situation — so, Ricky Bobby-style,” he said afterward, referencing the Will Ferrell film “Talladega Nights.” “It was an interesting moment, but a fun moment, to be embraced by your teammates like that. That was pretty special.”
Not even the most optimistic Vikings staffers envisioned this type of moment. Minnesota went after Darnold early in the 2024 offseason. Before former quarterback Kirk Cousins exited in free agency, and before the team drafted McCarthy, one high-profile agent confirmed that the Vikings had coveted Darnold as their starter from the outset.
Familiarity helped both his recruitment and his introduction to the offense. Vikings quarterbacks coach Josh McCown, who mentored Darnold in his early years with the New York Jets, considered him a close friend. The signing gave the Vikings developmental wiggle room. McCarthy, a player the franchise knew needed time to adapt to NFL footwork and clean up his mechanics, could sit and improve with scout-team reps.
McCarthy’s torn meniscus applied further pressure on Darnold to perform, especially considering O’Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah had yet to receive contract extensions. Three exceptional early-season showings against the San Francisco 49ers, Houston Texans and Packers quieted any doubts. And excluding a midseason hiccup in Jacksonville, which featured three interceptions and spurred intense internal film reviews, Darnold shone.
Superstar receiver Justin Jefferson bought in. The offensive line raved about Darnold’s toughness as he navigated foot and hand injuries during the season. His counterparts in the quarterback room thought he deserved more credit for his consistency.
“What he’s doing is not easy, and he’s making it look easy,” veteran quarterback Nick Mullens said in December. “That needs to be appreciated — probably more than it is.”
From Weeks 10 through 17 of the 2024 season, Darnold completed 67.5 percent of his passes and threw for 2,012 yards with an 18-to-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Everything was on display: layered deep balls, subtle pocket movements, pre-snap orchestration. His command helped create one of the NFL’s most explosive passing games. Consistency established both internal and external hope, and the existence of hope for a franchise as devoid of postseason success as the Vikings is why the crash landing stung as much as it did.
In Week 18, facing the Detroit Lions for the No. 1 seed, Darnold missed multiple scoring chances in the red zone. His play contributed to a 31-9 loss. The next week, in a wild-card debacle against the Los Angeles Rams, the pocket caved in on him constantly. He was sacked nine times, which underscored his issues with processing chaotic fronts and coverages. It also clarified the Vikings’ needs on their fronts, many of which would require cap space to address, given the lack of previous draft hits — and the lack of draft capital for 2025.
In two weeks, a divorce from Darnold went from unlikely to probable. The Vikings had too many holes to fill. They also had an inexperienced young quarterback who struggled through a season away from the action and the spotlight. Some inside the building pushed to keep Darnold, thinking that with more time in the system, his professionalism and experience would matter more than a couple of free-agent signings.
Organizationally, Minnesota dismissed those opinions. Seattle put them into practice.
Sam Darnold runs off the field following a late-season victory over the Packers last December. (Brace Hemmelgarn / Getty Images)
In Seattle, Darnold is surrounded by believers. Seahawks general manager John Schneider believes in Darnold the person as much as he does Darnold the player. Head coach Mike Macdonald believes in what he saw when his team lost to Darnold last season: poise, accuracy, toughness, leadership and high-level command of the game.
The coach was asked this week why Darnold’s poor finish in Minnesota didn’t deter the Seahawks from signing him.
“It’s a little narrow-minded,” Macdonald said. “You’re just going to go off a two-game sample? When we were looking into possibly trying to get Sam, to a person, the type of player and teammate he was on a daily basis was really cool.
“Then you watch the totality of the tape — there’s a lot of great things going on in the red zone, on third down, two-minute, on the move; we know he’s a great thrower on the move. All those things shined through.”
Seahawks edge rusher Uchenna Nwosu has believed since he and Darnold were teenagers at USC. Defensive tackle Leonard Williams believed when they were together with the New York Jets. Offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak believed this system, the same one they ran when they were together in San Francisco, would maximize Darnold’s skills. The Seattle defense that prepared for Darnold last year, then got lit up by him, returned nearly all of its members this year. They believe, too.
Tight end AJ Barner spent most of training camp telling anyone who’d listen that Darnold is one of the best quarterbacks in the world. Wide receiver Cooper Kupp was on the winning end of Darnold’s playoff debacle against the Rams, and yet he is adamant that the non-believers citing the quarterback’s final two games as their primary evidence are misguided.
“Go watch the games with a football understanding of what’s being called, what’s being done, positions that Sam’s being put in, the positions that the offense was in,” Kupp urged earlier this year. “There’s a bunch of other things going on for Sam that people don’t want to talk about because maybe you don’t understand it, it’s not as fun to talk about or it’s not as divisive to talk about.”
It has always been most important for Darnold to have unwavering faith in himself. Second on Darnold’s priority list is having the support of those around him. He has that in Seattle on a team that has chosen “M.O.B. Ties” as its rallying cry. The acronym stands for “Mission Over Bull—-.” Woven into that mantra is a collective faith that with Darnold, they will accomplish their mission. They see any opinions suggesting otherwise as bull—-.
Darnold’s connection with his teammates is why the Week 11, four-interception game against the Rams was so devastating.
“The reason that it sucks for me is because I feel like I’m letting those guys down,” Darnold said.
That mindset is a snapshot of the leadership that teammates and coaches have raved about for the past few months. Yes, Seattle loves that Darnold’s numbers, both raw and advanced, are among the best at his position. The tape tells that story, though. Anyone can appreciate arm talent from afar.
But the Seahawks also appear to be big winners of the Darnold dice roll because of the attitude of the guy they invested in. In the months since he arrived, everyone in the organization has observed how Darnold takes accountability even when others are at fault, routinely props up teammates and coaches, and stays composed during tough times. After those four interceptions, Darnold calmly led a 56-yard drive to set up a game-winning field goal try.
“If a quarterback had a rough day until then, he could have tucked his tail. But Sam didn’t do that,” center Olu Oluwatimi said. “You see how Sam battled, got us (off the 1-yard line) and gave us an opportunity to win.”
Darnold was the recipient of the richest external free-agent contract in Schneider’s 16-year stint as GM. Among the reasons Schneider is typically apprehensive about cashing out on outsiders is the potential for the personality to clash with Seattle’s culture. Schneider bet on Darnold the person, and it is paying off.
One afternoon last fall, Mullens was watching Darnold warm up next to one of the Vikings’ other backups, Brett Rypien. Darnold was doing what he does, applying touch on deep-developing passes to the opposite side of the field, uncorking in-breakers with anticipation.
Mullens turned to Rypien and said, “It’s beautiful.”
They both laughed.
“There’s no way he’s not one of the top throwers — passers — in the NFL,” Mullens added.
Whether or not the Vikings took that for granted is a subject that will be debated in Minnesota for the foreseeable future. However, his former teammates and coaches have paid attention to what he’s done in Seattle. They know Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Nijgba is approaching a historic level of output. They know Kubiak has designed a quarterback-friendly offense that thrives on play-action, with efficiency even exceeding that of Darnold’s time in Minnesota.
The lack of impact generated from Darnold’s cap savings is only salt in the wound. McCarthy’s untenable play is only one aspect of the Vikings’ struggles. Minnesota spent big on center Ryan Kelly, right guard Will Fries, cornerback Byron Murphy Jr. and defensive tackles Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen. None is playing at his contract value.
Darnold hasn’t yet shaken the shrinks in big games label attached to him, and playing well against his old team won’t silence any of those critics. But for the second year in a row, he’s quarterbacking a team on track to play meaningful games in December and January. He has earned more opportunities to change the narrative.
All of this sits at the backdrop of a matchup that feels poetic. One team, reeling without reliability at the switch. The other, seemingly capable of anything with the veteran Darnold at the helm.